Fast, Howard

"The Martian Shop"

These are the background facts
given to Detective Sergeant Tom
Bristol when he was instructed to
break down the door and go into
the place. It is true that the
locksmiths at Centre Street have
earned the reputation of being
able to open anything that has
been closed; and that reputation
is not undeserved. But this door
was an exception. So Bristol went
to break down the door with two
men in uniform and crowbars and
all the other tools that might be
necessary. But before that he
studied a precis of the pertinent
facts.

It had been established that three
stores had been opened on the same
day and the same hour; and more
than that, as an indication of a
well-organized and orderly mind,
the space for each of the stores
had been rented on the same day,
the leases signed on the same
hour. The store in Tokyo was
located in the very best part of
The Ginza. The space had been
occupied by a fine jewelry and
watchmaking establishment perhaps
the second or third best in all
Japan; they vacated the premises,
refusing to give the press any
explanation whatsoever at the
time. Later, however, it was re-
vealed that the price paid to the
jewelry establishment for the
purchase of its lease consisted of
fifty diamonds of exactly three
carats each, all of them so
perfectly matched so alike in
their flawlessness, that diamond
experts consider the very
existence of the
collectionhitherto unknownto be
a unique event in the long history
of jewels.

The store in Paris was, of course,
on Faubourg St. Honore. There were
no stores vacant at the time, and
the lease of a famous couturier
was purchased for forty million
francs. The couturier (his name is
omitted at specific request of the
French government) named the price
facetiously, for he had no
intention of surrendering his
place. When the agent for the
principal wrote out a check on the
spot, holding him to his word, he
had no choice but to go through
with the deal.

The third store was on Fifth
Avenue in New York City. After
thirty years on the Avenue, the
last ten increasingly
unprofitable, the old and stodgy
firm of Delbos gave up its
struggle against modern
merchandising. The store it had
occupied was located on the block
between 52nd and 53rd Street, on
the east side of the street. The
property itself was managed by
Clyde and Abraharrls, who were
delighted to release Delbos from a
twenty-five year lease that had
been signed in 1937, and who
promptly doubled the rent. The
Slocum Company, acting as agents
for the principalswho never
entered into the arrangements at
all, either with Clyde and
Abrahams or subsequently with
Trevore, the decorating firm made
no protest over the increased
rent, signed the lease, and then
paid a year's rent in advance.
Arthur Lewis, one of the younger
partners in the Slocum Company,
conducted the negotiations. Wally
Clyde of Clyde and Abrahams
remarked at the time that the
Slocum Company was losing its
grip. Lewis shrugged and said that
they were following instructions;
he said that if he had bargaining
power himself, he would be damned
before he ever agreed to such
preposterous rent.

Lewis also conducted the
negotiatons with Trevore, turning
over to them detailed plans for
the redesigning and decoration of
the store, and agreeing to the
price they set. He did make it
plain, however, that his specific
instructions from his principal
were to agree to all prices asked
and to deal only with the firms he
was told to deal with. He pointed
out to Trevore that such practices
were to the Slocum Company and
were not to be anticipated under
any circumstances in the future.

When the information for this
precis was gathered, Mr. Samuel
Carradine of the Trevore Company
produced the original plans for
the remodeling and decoration of
the store, that is the plans
turned over to him by Mr. Lewis.
They are hand-drawn on a fine but
strong paper of pale yellow tint.
Two paper experts, one of them
chief chemist for Harlin Mills,
have already examined these plans,
but they are unable to identify
the paper, nor have they seen
similar paper before. They do
assert that the paper has neither
a pulp nor a rag base. Part of the
paper is at present undergoing
chemical analysis at Crestwood
Laboratories.

From this point onward, the
history of the three stores is
sufficiently general for the data
on the Fifth Avenue store to
suffice. In all three cases,
rental and alteration were managed
under similar circumstances; in
all three cases the subsequent
progress of events was the same,
making due allowance for the
cultural patterns of each country.
In each case, the decoration of
the store was in excellent taste,
unusual, but nevertheless artfully
connected with the general decor
of the particular avenue.

Trevore charged over a hundred
thousand dollars for alteration
and decoration. The storefront was
done in stainless steel panels,
used as tile. Window-space was
enlarged, and a magnificent
bronze-veneered door replaced the
ancient oak porral of Delbos. The
interior was done in tones of
black and crimson, with drapes and
carpeting of mustard yellow, and
the display cases and platforms
were of bronze and glass.
Decorators whose opinions have
been sought all concur in the
assessment of results. Without
doubt the three stores were done
in excellent, if not superb,
tastethe decoration bold, unique,
but never vulgar or distressing.
It must be noted, however, that
Mr. Ernest Searles, who heads the
decor department of the Fifth
Avenue Association, pointed out
certain angularthat is,
unfamiliar degree angles concepts
never used before by American
decorators.

On Fifth Avenue, as in the other
cases, the center focus of the
decorating scheme was the crystal
replica of the Planet Mars, which
was suspended from the ceiling in
each shop, and which revolved at
the same tempo as Mars itself. It
has not yet been determined what
type of mechanism activates these
globes. The globes, which display
a unique and remarkable map of
Mars's surface, were installed by
the principals, after Trevore had
completed the overall alteration
and decoration. While the Fifth
Avenue storefront is striking it
was done with the type of
expensive modesty that would do
credit to Tiffany's. The last
thing installed was the name of
the shop itself, MARS PRODUCTS, in
gold letters, each letter a half-
inch in relief and five inches
high. It has since been determined
that these letters are cast out of
solid gold.

The three shops opened their
doors to the public at ten A.M.,
on the tenth of Marchin local
time and day. In New York, the
letters spelling out MARS PRODUCTS
had been displayed for eight days,
and a good deal of curiosity had
been aroused, both among the
public and the press. But until
actual opening, no information had
been offered.

During those days, four objects
had been on display in the shop
windows. No doubt the reader of
this precis has seen or examined
these objects, each of which stood
upon a small crystal display-
stand, framed in black velvet, for
all the world like precious
jewels, which in a sense they
were. The display consisted of a
clock, an adding machine, an
outboard motor and a music box,
although only the clock was
recognizable through its
appearance, a beautiful precision
instrument, activated as a number
of clocks are by the variation in
atmospheric pressure. Yet the
workmanship, materials and general
beauty of this clock outdid
anything obtainable in the regular
market.

The adding machine was a black
cube, measuring slightly more than
six inches. The covering is of
some as yet undetermined synthetic
or plastic, inlaid with the
curious hieroglyphs that have come
to be known as the Martian script,
the hieroglyphs in white and gold.
This machine is quickly and easily
adjusted or sensitized to the
sound of an individual voice, and
it calculates on the basis of
vocal instruction. The results
emerge through a thin slit in the
top, printed on paper similar to
that mentioned before.
Theoretically, such a calculator
could be built today, but, so far
as we know, by only two shops, one
in Germany and the other in Japan,
and the cost would be staggering;
certainly, it would take years of
experimental work to develop it to
the point where it would deal with
thirteen digits, adding,
subtracting, multiplying and
dividing entirely by vocal
command.

The outboard motor was an object
about the size of a tall electric
sewing machine, fabricated of some
blue metal and weighing fourteen
pounds, six ounces and a fraction.
Two simple tension clips attached
it to any boat or cart or car. It
generated forty horsepower in jet
propulsion, and it contained,
almost microcosmically, its own
atomic generator, guaranteed for
one thousand continuous hours of
operation. Through a muffling
device, which has so far defied
even theoretical solution, it
produced less sound than an
ordinary outboard motor. In each
shop, this was explained, not as a
muffling procedure, but as a
matter of controlled pitch beyond
the range of the human ear.
Competent engineers felt that this
explanation must be rejected.

In spite of the breathtaking
implications of this atomic
motor, it was the music box that
excited the most attention and
speculation. Of more or less the
same dimensions as the adding
machine, it was of pale yellow
synthetic, the hieroglyphs
circled out in dark gray. Two
slight depressions on the top of
this box activated it, a slight
touch of one depression to start
it, a second touch on the same
depression to stop it. The second
depression, when touched, changed
the category of the music
desired. There were twenty-two
categories of music
availablesymphonic music in
three chronological sections,
chamber music in three sections,
piano solo, violin solo with and
without accompaniment, folk music
for seven cultures, operatic in
three sections, orchestra, full
cast and orchestra, that is the
complete opera, and selected ren-
derings, religious music, divided
into five religious categories,
popular songs in national
sections, instrumental music in
terms of eighty-two instruments,
jazz in five categories and three
categories of children's music.

The salespeople in each of the
three shops claimed that the music
box had a repertoire of eleven
thousand and some odd separate
musical selections, but this, of
course, could not be put to the
test, and varying opinions on this
score have been expressed. Also
the use of vocal instruction to
set the sound and pitchwhich was
not inferior to the best mass-
produced high fidelitywas poo-
pooed as fakery. But Mr. Harry
Flannery, consulting-sound
engineer for the Radio Corporation
of America, has stated that the
music box could be compiled out of
available technical knowledge,
especially since the discovery of
transistor electronics. As with
the adding machine, it was less
the technical achievement than
the workmanship that was
unbelievable. But Mr. Flannery
admitted that a content of eleven
thousand works was beyond present
day knowledge or skill, providing
that this enormous repertoire was
a fact. From all witnesses
interrogated, we have compiled a
list of more than three hundred
works played by the shop's
demonstration music box.

These were the four objects
displayed in the windowK of each
of the three stores. The same four
objects were an available for
examination and demonstration
inside each of rhe stores. The
clock was priced at S500.00, the
adding machine at $475.00, the
outboard motor at $1620.00 and the
music box at $700.00and these
prices were exactly the same at
the current exchange, in Tokyo and
Paris.

Prior to the openingthat is, the
previous dayquarterpage
advertisements, in the New York
Times only, stated simply and
directly that the people of the
Planet Mars announced the opening,
the following day, of a shop on
Fifth Avenue, which would display,
demonstrate, and take orders for
four products of Martian industry.
It explained the limited selection
of offerings by pointing out that
this was only an initial step, in
order to test the reactions of
Earth buyers. It was felt, the
advertisement stated, that
commercial relations between the
Earth and Mars should be on the
friendliest basis, and the Martian
industrialists had no desire to
upset the economic balance of
Earth.

The advertisement went on to say
that orders would be taken for all
of the products, and that delivery
was guaranteed in twelve days. The
advertisement expressed the hope
that this would mark the beginning
of a cordial and fruitful and
lasting relationship between the
inhabitants of both planets.

This advertisement was hardly the
first word in the press concerning
the Martian shops. Already, every
columnist had carried an item or
two about what was, without
question one of the most
imaginative and novel publicity
schemes of the space age. Several
columnists had it on the best au-
thorityfor rumors were all over
the citythat General Dynamics was
behind the Martian shops. They
were also credited to General
Electric, the Radio Corporation,
and at least a dozen of large
industrial enclaves. Again, a
brilliant young merchandiser was
named, a Paris dress designer, and
a Greek shipping magnate. Still
others spoke of a scheme by German
industrialists to break into the
American market in force and of
course there were hints that the
Soviet Union was behind the method
of destroying capitalism.
Engineers were willing to grant
Russia the skill, but interior
decorators refused to acknowledge
the ability of the Russians to
produce original and tasteful
decor. But until the shops
actually opened and the working
capabilities of the machines were
actually demonstrated, no one was
inclined to take the matter too
seriously.

On the tenth of March, the shops
opened in each of the three
cities. The tenth of March was a
Monday in New York. The shops
remained open until Friday, and
then they closed down for goodso
far as we know.

But in those five days, thousands
of people crowded into the Fifth
Avenue store. The machines were
demonstrated over and over.
Thousands of orders were taken,
but all deposits and prepayment
were refused. The New York shop
was statfed by one man and five
tall, charming and efficient women
What they actually looked like is
a matter of dispute, for they all
wore skin-tight face masks of some
latex-like material, but rather
than to make them repulsive, the
effect of the masks was quite
pleasant. Gloves of the same
material covered their hands, nor
was any part of their skin
anywhere exposed.

John Mattson, writing in the News
the following day, said, "Never
did the inhabitants of two planets
meet under more promising
circumstances. Having seen the
Martian figure and having had a
touch of the Martian charm, I am
willing to take any chances with
the Martian face. Uncover, my
lovelies, uncover. Earth waits
with bated breath."

Professor Hugo Elligson, the
famous astronomer, visited the
shop for Life. His report says in
part, "If the masked people in
this shop are Martians, then I
say, Space must be conquered. I
know it is strange for an
astronomer to dwell I on shapely
legs and muted, rippling accents,
yet I know that from here on my
wife will eye me strangely
whenever I look at the Red Planet.
As to the relationship of an
excellent publicity scheme to the
Planet Mars, common intelligence
orders me to withhold comment"

Perhaps the Soviet Union thought
different; for on the second day
of the shop's business, two
gentlemen from Russian Embassy
were known to enter and offer a
cool million United States dollars
for the demonstration sample of
the atomic outboard. The Martians
were polite but firm.

By Wednesday, Mars Products
occupied more space in the New
York press than international
news. It crowded out the crises in
the Middle East, and Formosa was
relegated to page seventeen of the
Times. A dozen authorities were
writing scholarly opinions.
Traffic on Fifth Avenue was im-
possible, and one hundred extra
police were detailed to maintain
order and make it possible for any
of the Fifth Avenue stores to do
business. The Fifth Avenue
Association decided to apply for
an injunction, on the grounds that
Mars Products disrupted the
ordinary practice of business.

Much the same was happening on
Faubourg St. Honore, and on the
Ginza.

Also on Wednesday, American
industry awoke and panicked.
Boards of Directors were convened
all over the nation. Important
industrial magnates flew to
Washington, and the stock of
electronic, business-machine and
automobile companies sent the Dow-
Jones averages down twenty-six
points. The largest builder of
systems and calculating machines
in American saw its stock sell ten
minutes ahead of the ticker, down
one hundred and eighty points for
the day. So also on the London,
Paris and Tokyo exchanges.

But the intelligence service was
not perturbed until Thursday, when
it sent formal requests to the
F.B.I. and to the New York City
Police Department to determine who
and what the principals behind
Mars Products wereand to
ascertain where these machines had
been manufactured, whether they
had been imported, and whether
duty had been paid. The Surete and
the Tokyo Police were by then
taking similar steps.

Without going into the details of
this investigation, it suffices to
say that in every case, the
investigating authorities were
baffled. All three bank accounts
were the result of large cash
deposits by very commonplace men
who were no different from
thousands of other average men.
The acting agents were given, by
mail, full power of attorney as
well as instructions. The
investigations were not completed
until Friday evening.

By Friday, each of the three shops
was under surveillance by various
government and police agencies. In
New York, city detectives put a
twenty-four hour watch on Mars
Products Wednesday evening, even
before any instructions or
requests came from Washington. But
no member of the staff left the
shop after closing hours, or at
any other time. Curtains were
drawn across the windows, blocking
off the display products. At ten
A.M., the curtains were drawn
back.

During Friday, in New York and
Washington, discussions were held
on the advisability of issuing
injunctions or search warrants. At
the same time, there was
understandable hesitancy. If this
was a publicity scheme of some
industrial group, whatever agency
acted could be the laughing stock
of the nationas well as opening
itself to considerable liability,
if legal action was taken by the
injured party. Plainclothesmen had
been in and out of the shop a
hundred times, searching for some
violation. None had been found. No
loophole had been detected.

Friday night, the shop on Fifth
Avenue closed as usual the
curtains were drawn. At eleven
P.M., the lights went out. At
three A.M., the door of the shop
opened.

At that time on Saturday morning,
Fifth Avenue was deserted. The
shop was then being observed by
four city detectives, two federal
agents, two members of Central In-
telligence, and three private
operatives hired by the National
Association of Manufacturers. The
eleven men made no attempt at
concealment. There was only one
store entrance. Across the avenue,
four cars waited.

When the door of Mars Products
opened, the five members of the
staff walked out. They all carried
packages. At precisely the same
moment, a large black automobile
drew up at the curb in front of
the shop. The man opened the back
door of this car, and all five
staff members entered. Then the
door closed and they drove away.
They were followed by the four
cars. The agents who were watching
them had instructions not to
interfere, to make no arrests, but
to follow any member of the staff
to his or her destination and to
report along the way by radio.

We have an exact description of
the automobile. Shaped somewhat
like a Continental, it was at
least a foot longer, though no
broader. It had a strange hood,
more rounded than a stock car; but
it was larger than any known sport
car.

It headed uptown, well within the
speed limits, turned into Central
Park, emerged at 7th Avenue and
110th Street, proceeded north and
then beneath 155th Street to the
Harlem River Speedway. When it
reached the Speedway, two police
cars had joined the caravan behind
it. Toward the George Washington
Bridge approach-ramp, it began to
pick up speed and when it passed
the ramp, continuing on the
deserted Speedway, it was already
doing eighty miles an hour. The
police cars opened their sirens,
and by radio, additional police
cars were instructed to set up a
roadblock at Dyckman Street.

At that point, the black car put
out wings, at least seven feet on
either side, and went over to jet
power. It left the pursuing cars
as if they were standing still. It
is impossible to arrive at any
accurate estimate of its ground
speed then but it was certainly
well over a hundred and thirty
miles an hour. It was airborne in
a matter of seconds, gained ali-
tude quickly, and disappeared, by
its sound, eastward. It was picked
up twice by radar at an altitude
of twenty thousand feet, moving at
very high speed, even for jet
power. The airforce was
immediately notified and planes
took off within minutes, but there
is no report of the black caror
planebeing sighted again, nor was
it again raised with radar.

It is sufficient to note that the
progress of events in Tokyo and
Paris was more or less identical.
In no case, was the staff of the
shop interfered with or taken.

Such was the precis that
Detective Sergeant Bristol re-
viewed before he went uptown to
break in the door of Mars
Products. It told him nothing that
he did not already knows and in
all truth, he knew a great deal
more. His own specialty was entry
and search, but like almost every
other citizen of New York, he had
speculated during the past days on
the intriguing problem of Mars
Products. He was well trained in
the art of rejecting any
conclusions not founded on facts
he could test with sight, touch or
smell, but in spite of this
training, his imagination conjured
up a host of possibilities behind
the locked door of Mars Products.
He was still young enough to view
his work with excitement, and all
during this day, his excitement
had been mounting.

Both the city police and the F.B.I.
had decided to wait through
Saturday before opening the shop,
and these decisions were
communicated to Tokyo and Paris.
Actually, the New York shop was
opened a few hours later than the
others.

When Bristol arrived at 52nd
Street and Fifth Avenue, at least
a dozen men were waiting for him.
Among them were the police
commissioner, the mayor, General
Arlen Mack, the Chief of Staff, a
colonel in Military Intelligence
and several F B I. officials.
There were also at least a hundred
onlookers, held back by policemen.
The police commissioner was
irritated and indicated that
Bristol was the type to be late at
his own funeral.

"I was told to be here at seven
o'clock, sir," Bristol said. "It
is still a few minutes before
seven."

"Well, don't argue about it. Get
that door open!

It was easier said than done.
When they ripped off the bronze
plate, they found solid steel
underneath. They burned through it
and hammered off the bolted
connection. It took almost an hour
before the door was openand then,
as had been the case in Tokyo and
Paris, they found the store empty.
The beautiful crystal reproduction
of the Planet Mars had been
pulverized; they found the shards
in a waste basket, and it was
taken to Centre Street for
analysis. Otherwise, none of the
decorations had been disturbed or
removed not even the solid gold
letters on the store front a
small fortune in itself. But the
eight products, the four from the
window and the four used in the
shop as demonstrators, were gone.

The high brass prowled around the
place for an hour or so, examining
the decorations and whispering to
each other in corners. Someone
made the inevitable remark about
fingerprints, and the commissioner
growled, "People whose skin is
covered don't leave fingerprints."
By nine o'clock, the brass had
left, and Bristol went to work.
Two F.B.I. men had remained; they
watched the methods of the three
men from Centre Street in silent
admiration.

Bristol's specialty was, as we
noted, entry and search. He had
four children, a wife he adored,
and he was soberly ambitious. He
had long since decided to turn
his specialty into a science and
then to develop that science to
a point unequaled elsewhere.
First he brought in lights and
flooded the store with three
thousand additional watts of
illumination. Since there was
only the main room and a small
office and lavatory behind it,
he brightened the space
considerably. Then he and his
two assistants hooked portable
lights onto their belts. He told
the F.B.I. men:

"The first element of search is
find it."

"Do you know what to look for? "

"No," Bristol said. "Neither
does anyone else. That makes it
easier in a way."

First they removed all drapery,
spread white sheets brushed the
drapery carefully on both sides,
folded it and removed it. The dust
was collected and labeled. Then
they swept all the floors, then
went over them a second time with
a vacuum cleaner. The dust was
sifted, packaged and labeled.
Then, filling the vacuum cleaner
with new bags each time they went
over every inch of space, floor,
walls, ceiling molding and
furniture. Again, the bags were
packaged and labeled. Then they
took the upholstered furniture
apart bit by bit, shredding the
fabric and filling. The foam
rubber in the cushions was needled
and then picked apart. Once again,
everything was labeled

"This is more or less
mechanical," Bristol explained to
the government men. "Routine. We
do the chemical and microscopic
analysis downtown."

"Routine, eh?"

"I mean for this type of problem.
We don't get this kind of problem
in terms of search more than two
or three times a year.

At two o'clock in the morning,
the government men went to buy
coffee and sandwiches. They
brought back a box of food for the
city men. By four A.M., the
carpeting had been taken down to
Centre Street, the toilet walls
stripped of tile, the plumbing
removed and checked, the toilet
and sink ertirely dismantled. At
six o'clock on,Sunday morning, in
the cold gray light of dawn,
Bristol was supervising the taking
apart of every piece of bonded
wood or metal in the shop.

He made the find in a desk, a
modern desk of Swedish design that
had been supplied by the
decorators. Its surface was of
polished birch, and there was a
teak strip across the front. When
this strip was removed, Bristol
found a bit of film, less than an
inch long and about three
millimeters in width. When he held
it up to the light with tweezers
and put a magnifying glass on it,
it was discovered to be film
strip. It contained sixteen full
frames and part of a seventeenth
frame.

Minutes later, he was in a car
with the government men, racing
down to Centre Street; and only
then did he permit himself the
luxury of a voiced opinion.

"They must have been editing that
film, he remarked. I have been
reading how orderly and precise
they are. But even an orderly
person can lose something. Even a
Martian, he finished doubtfully.

Strangely enough, the govemment
men made no comment at all.

Bristol is remembered, and it has
been said in many places that he
will go far. He has already been
promoted, and without question he
will be mentioned by historians
for years to come. He was an
honest and thorough man, and he
had an orderly mind to match other
orderly minds.

Professor Julius Goldman will
also be remembered. The head of
the Department of Semitic
Languages at Columbia Universlty,
he was also the leading
philologist in the Western
Hemisphere, if not the world; and
to him as much as to any other
goes the credit for breaking
through the early Cretan script.
He pioneered the brilliantif
again failingrecent Etruscan
effort. Along with Jacobs of
Oklahoma, he is the leading
authority on American Indian
languages, specializing there in
the Plains dialects. It is said
that there is no important
language on earth, living or dead,
that he cannot command fluently.

This is possibly an exaggeration,
but since he was reached by the
White House that same Sunday,
flown to Washington, put at the
head of a team of five of the
countrys finest philologistsand
since he accomplished what was
expected of him in thirty-two
hours, it might be said that his
reputation was deserved.

Yet by the grace of God or
whatever force determines our
destiny, he was given a "Rosetta
Stone," so to speak. Without it,
as he was the first to point out,
the Martian script would not have
been broken, not now and possibly
not even the "Rosetta
Stone"which, you will recall,
originally enabled philologists to
break the mystery of the Egyptian
hieroglyphs by providing them, on
the same stone tablet, with
translations in known tongueswas
in this case a single frame of the
film strip, containing both an
English and Martian inscription.
Acting on the possibility that one
was a translation of the other,
Professor Goldman found an opening
for the attack. Nevertheless, it
remains perhaps the more
extraordinary case of
reconstruction in all the history
of language.

That Tuesday, the Tuesday after
the store had been broken into,
the President of the United States
held an enlarged meeting of his
cabinet at the White House. In
addition to the regular members of
the cabinet, some forty-two other
persons were present, Julius
Goldman among them; and it was not
Goldman alone who appeared haggard
from want of sleep. Each of the
men present had a precissomewhat
enlarged-that was not too
different from the one presented
here. Each of them had read it and
pondered it. Opening the meeting,
the President reviewed the facts,
mentioned some of the opinions
already gathered from experts, and
then said:

"What are we to think, gentlemen?
Our own halting probes into outer
space have removed the starry
realm from the province of fiction
writers and gullible fools. As yet
we have no firm conclusions, but I
do hope that at the end of this
meeting, we will formulate a few
and be able to act upon them. I
need not repeat that some of the
keenest minds in America still
consider the Martian shops to be a
remarkable hoax. If so, a
practical joke costing its
originator a great many mlllions
of dollars, has been played out to
no point. In all fairness, I
reject this conclusion, nor can I,
at this point in my knowledge,
support any arguments that we have
seen a great publicity campaign. I
have come to certain conclusions
of my own, but I shall withhold
them until others have been heard.

"As most of you know, through the
energy and resourcefulness of the
New York City police department,
we found a tiny bit of film strip
at the Fifth Avenue shop. Nothing
of any value was found either in
Paris or Tokyo. Nevertheless, I
have invited the Japanese and
French ambassadors to be present
tonight, since their countries
have been chosen, even as ours
was. I do not say that their
interest is higher than that of
other nations, for perhaps"

The President hesitated then and
shrugged tiredly. "Well, at this
point, I will turn the meeting
over to Professor Julius Goldman
of Columbia University, our
greatest philologist whose
contribution to the unravelling
of this problem cannot be
overestimated."

Professor Goldman said quietly
that, for the record, he had made
no contribution not shared equally
by his colleagues, who were not
present this evening. They had,
all six of them, prepared an
affidavit, which he would read in
the name of the entire team.
First, he would like the people
assembled to see the film strip
for themselves.

The room was darkened. The first
frame appeared on a prepared
screen at one end of the room. It
was covered with vertical lines of
what had already come to be called
the Martian Hieroglyphic. So with
the second and the "Rosetta
Stone." At the top, in English
block letters:

"Compound for white males16 to
19 years of age."

And directly beneath, again in
English, "General warning. Any
discusson of escape or resistance
will be met by permanent
stimulation of the tri-geminal
nerve."

And as a final line in English,
"Much have I travelled in the
realms of gold."

Beneath these English lines were
a number of vertical hieroglyph
columns.

The voice of Professor Goldman
explained, "This frame gave us our
key, but we do not claim any clear
knowledge of what these
inscriptions mean. Medical
authorities consulted have
suggested that a certain type of
irritation of the tri-geminal
nerve can result in the most
trying pain man knows. The line
from Keats is utterly meaningless,
so far as we can deterrnine; the
reason for its inclusion remains
to be explained in the future, if
ever. The remaining frames, as you
see, are in the hieroglyph."

The lights went on again.
Professor Goldman blinked tiredly,
wiped his glasses, and said,
"Before I present our affidavit, I
must ask your indulgence for a few
words concerning language. When we
philologists claim to have cracked
the mystery of some ancient
tongue, we do not talk as a cryp-
tographer who has broken a code.
Philology and Cryptography are
very different sciences. When a
code is broken, its message is
known. When a language is broken,
only the first step in a long and
arduous process is taken. No
single man or single group of men
has ever revealed an ancient
language; that is an international
task and must of necessity take
generations to complete.

"I say this because perhaps your
hopes have been raised too high.
We have very little to work from,
only a few words and numerals; we
are dealing with an unrelated
tongue, totally alien; and we have
had only a few hours to grapple
with the problem. Therefore,
though we have been able to
extract some meaning rom two of
the frames, there, are many blank
spaces and many perplexities. In
our favor are these facts:
firstall language, possibly
anywhere in the universe, appears
to have a developmental logic and
relationship; secondly, these
frames deal with life on earth;
and finally, it is our good
fortune that this is an alphabetic
form of writing, consisting, so
far as we can determine, of
fortyone sound signs, at least
thirty of them consonantal. These
consonantal forrns suggest a vocal
arrangement not unlike our
ownthat is in physical structure,
for sounds are to a large extent
determined by the physical
characteristics of the creature
producing them. My colleagues
agree that there is no indication
of any relationship between this
alphabet and language and any
known language of Earth. For my
part, I will make no comment on
the origin of this language. It is
not my fieldnor is it my
purpose." The President nodded.
"We understand that, Professor
Goldman." Goldman continued: "The
affidavit itself will be projected
on the screen, since we consider
it more effective for the partial
translation to be read rather than
heard." The room was then darkened
again, and the following appeared
on the screen: "A tentative and
partial translation of the first
two frames of a film strip, given
to the undersigned for translation
purposes:

The voice of Professor Goldman cut
in, "That is the first frame. As
you see, our translation is
tentative and incomplete. We have
very little to work from. Where
the word is within brackets and
coupled with a question mark, we
are making what might be called a
calculated surmisesurmise not a guess, but a surmise
from too few facts. Now the second
frame.

The inscription remained on the
screen, and Goldman's voice, flat,
tired and expressionless,
explained:

"When we bracket a number of
words, one after another, we are
uncertain as to which is
preferable. Actually, only a
sirlgle word is being translated"
His voice faded away. The names of
the six philologists appeared on
the screen. The lights went on,
but the silence was as deep and
lasting as thc darkness before it.
Finally, the Secretary of State
rose, looked at the President,
received his nod, and said to
Professor Goldman:

"I desire your opinion,
Professor. Are these faked? Do
they originate on earth? Or are we
dealing with Martians? That's not
a dirty word. Everyone is thinking
it; no one will say it. I want
your opinion.

"I am a scientist and a scholar,
sir. I form opinions only when I
have sufficient facts to make them
credible. This is not the case
now."

"You have more facts than anyone
on earth! You can read that
outlandish gibberish!"

"No more than you can, sir,"
Goldman replied softly. "What I
have read, you have read." "You
come to it as a philologist," the
Secretary of State persisted.

"Yes."

"Then as a philologist, is it your
opinion that this language
originated on earth?"

"How can I answer that, sir? What
is my opinion worth when fashioned
out of such thin stuff?"

"Then tell usdo you detect any
relationship to any known Earthly
language?"

"No-no, I do not," Goldman
answered, smiling rather sadly.

And then there was silence again.
Now one of the President's
secretaries appeared, and
distributed copies of the
affidavit to everyone present. A
longer silence now, while the
affidavits were studied. Then the
French ambassador asked for the
floor.

"Mr. President," he said,
"members of the cabinet and
gentlemenmany of you know that my
own government discussed this same
problem yesterday. I am
instructed, if the occasion should
so determine, to make a certain
request of you. I think the
occasion does so determine. I
request that you send immediately
for the Soviet Ambassador "

No one was shocked or surprised
by the suggestion. The Soviet
Ambassador was sent for. He had
evidently been waiting, for he
arrived within minutes; and when
he stated immediately that he
would also represent the People's
Republic of China or take his
leave, the President of the United
States suppressed a smile and
nodded. He was given a precis and
a copy of the affidavit, and after
he had read both, the meeting
began. It went on until three
o'clock on Wednesday morning,
during which time thirty-two
technical specialists arrived,
gave opinion or testimony, and
departed. Then the meeting was
suspended for five hoursand came
together again with the
representatives of India, China,
Great Britain, Italy and Germany
in attendance. At six o'clock
Wednesday evening, the meeting was
adjourned, and the following day
an extraordinary session of the
Assembly of the United Nations was
called. By that time, Professor
Goldman, with the assistance of
Japanese, Chinese and Russian
philologists, had completed a
tentative translation of the film
strip. Before this complete
translation was published in the
international press, it was made
available to all delegates to the
United Nations Assembly.

On Saturday, only a week after
Detective Sergeant Bristol had
forced the door of the Fifth
Avenue shop, the Premier of India
arose to address the Assembly of
the United Nations.

"It is more than ironic," he said
with some sadness, "that we who
have been so savagely condemned by
another planet, another culture
and people, can find more than a
little truth in the accusations.
How close we have come, time and
again, to accomplishing the
destruction outlined by these peo-
ple from outer space! And how
unhappy it is to know our own
fitful dream of a peaceful future
must be laid aside, perhaps
forever! Shall it be some
consolation that we must join
hands to fight another enemy
rather than each other? I pray so,
for it is not without deep grief
that my country lays aside the
slim shield of neutrality it has
clung to so desperately.
Gentlemen, India is yours; its
teeming millions will labor in the
common defense of our mother
earth. Its inadequate mills and
mines are at the world's disposal,
and I hope with all my heart that
we have time to build more.

Then Russia spoke, then the
United States. China and eight
other countries were admitted to
the United Nations without a veto;
but this was only the beginning of
a series of actions which led,
within the month, to the creation
of World Spaceways international
plan for the building of four
great space stations circling the
earth, a mighty fleet of
atomically powered space-ships,
and the construction of a military
defense base on the moon, under
the control of the United Nations.
A three-year plan for the defense
of Earth was put into operation;
and, as so few had anticipated,
the beginnings of world government
in terms of actual sovereign
power, came with a comprehensive
world general staff.

Within three months after
Detective Sergeant Bristol's
discovery, the first world code of
law was drafted and presented to
the General Assembly. The
antiquated and rusting ships of
the navies of earth, the discarded
and useless artillery, the already
archaic guided missiles, the
laughable small arms all of them
bore witness to the beginning of
world govemment.

And in less than a year,
Culpepper Motors, one of the
largest industrial complexes on
earth, announced that they had
duplicated the Martian outboard
atomic motor. The people of earth
laughed and flexed their arms.
When they 1ooked up at the sky, at
the tiny red orb of Mars, it was
with growing confidence and
lessening fear.

For they had discovered a new
name for themselves; they had
discovered that they were a nation
of mankind. It was a beginning
rough and fumbling and uneasy in
many of its aspects but
nevertheless a beginning. And all
over the earth, this beginning was
celebrated in a variey of ways.

At the home of Franklin Harwood
Plummer, its eightythree rooms
nestled securely in the midst of
an eleven hundred acre estate in
New York's Putnam County, it was
celebrated in a style befitting
the place and circurnstances. Mr
Plummer could and did give dinners
that were large and important and
unnoticed by the press a fact
not unrelated to his control of a
great deal of the press, among
other things. But even for his
baronial halls, this evening's
gathering was large and unique,
three hundred and twentyseven men
and women, apart from Mr. Plummer
himself and his eighteen
colleagues who composed the Board
of Directors of Culpepper Motors.

At fifty-eight, Mr. Plummer was
President of Culpepper. Culpepper
Motors had a net value of fifteen
million dollars, a private
industrial worth exceeded, in all
the world, only by American Tel
and Tel; but if one were to trace
the interlocking and various
influences of the nineteen board
members, the question of worth
became so large as to be
meaningless. As the nominal lord
of this giant enterprise, Mr
Plummer was best defined by his
history. He had started; thirty-
five years before, as a lathe
operator in dhe old Lewet Shop,
and he had fought and smashed and
cut his way to the eventual top.
In dhe recent history of America,
there have been a few cases like
his, but not more dhan you could
count on the fingers of one hand.

Even in his own circles, he was
not loved; feared and respected he
was, but without family or
university, he remuned a strange,
violent and unpredictable
interloper. He was tall and broad
and red-faced and white-haired,
and as he stood at one end of the
great dining room in his overlarge
and over-furnished home, he made
reference to the fact dhat he did
not even play goU. His three
hundred and twenty-seven guests
and his eighteen colleagues
permiKed themselves to smile
slighdy at that.

"No," Mr. Plummer continued, "no
golf, no tennis, no sisulingI
have been what most of you would
call a preoccupied man, and my
preoccupation has been the making
of money. If I have ever laved my
conscience with any sop, it was to
recollect that single witty remark
of a man who was otherwise
remarkably humorless, Calvin
Coolidge who gave folk like
myself grace by stating that the
business of the United States was
business."

Mr. Plummer grinned. He had an
infectious grin the smile a man
who has made it beyond belief, who
drives back to the old home town
in a chrome-plated Cadillac.

"I enjoy making money," he said
simply. "I am accused of lusting
for power. Hogwash! I lust for a
naked and nasty word profit;
always have and I always will. It
embarrasses my eighteen
colleagues, sitting here on either
side of me, for me to be as blunt
and ignoble as this; but I thank
whatever gods may be that I have
never been in hibited by breeding.
I also make a double point.
Firstly, the question of profit
I succeeded. Not only have I been
able to insure and secure the
future existence of Culpepper
Motors; not only have I developed
a situation where its profits will
increase every yearperhaps double
every five years, which makes our
stock a pretty good investment for
any of you but I have been able
to bring together under this roof
as fine a collection of human
beings as mankind can plovide. I
will not try to explain what that
means to me what it has meant to
know and work with each of the
three hundred and twenty-seven
people here. I think you can
guess.

"Secondly, I said what I said to
ease the feelings of those among
you who have cooperated in our
enterprise and have been paid for
their cooperation as against
those who would accept no pay.
Those who have been paid may feel
a certain guilt. To that I say
nonsense! No one does anything
strictly for money; there are
always other factors. I know. I
went into this for dollars and
cents plain and simple, and so
did my holier than God colleagues
on my Board of Directors. We have
all changed in the process. My
colleagues can stop wishing me
dead. I love them for what they
are now. I did not love them for
what they were when we began this
enterprise two years ago.
"Sitting among you, there is one
Jonas Wayne, of Fort Fayette,
Kentucky. He is an old-fashioned
blacksmith, and possibly the
finest hand worker in metal in
America. Our enterpride would have
been more difficult, if not
impossible, without him. Yet he
would not take a dollar from me
not even for expenses. He is a
God-fearing man, and he saw
himself as doing God's work, not
mine. Perhaps so. I don't know. At
the same table with him is M.
Orendell, the Ambassador of
France. He is far from being a
rich man, and his expenses have
been paid. We have no secrets
here. We live and die with our
knowledge, as a unique fraternity.
Professor Julius Goldman would
you please stand up, Professor
was, as you know, central to our
whole scheme. If it was painless
for him to decipher the Martian
script, it was far from painless
for him to devise ita task that
took more hours of work than the
building of the motor. He would
take no moneynot because he is
religious but because as he puts
it, he is a scientist. Komo
Aguchi, the physicisthe is at the
table with Dr. Goldman, accepted
one hundred thousand dollars,
which he spent in an attempt to
cure his wife, who is dying of
cancer. Shall we judge him? Or
shall we put cancer on the
immediate agenda?

"And what of Detective Sergeant
Tom Bristol? Is he an honest cop
or a dishonest cop? He accepted
four hundred shares of Culpepper
Motorsa hundred for each of his
children. He wants them to go to
college, and they will. Miss
Clementina Arden, possibly the
finest decorator here or on Mars,
charged us forty thousand dollars
for her contribution to the decor.
The price was reasonable. She is a
hardheaded business woman, and if
she does not look after herself,
who will? Yet she has turned down
other jobs. She didn't turn down
this one

"Well, my good friends, ladies
and gentlemen we will not meet
again, ever. My father, a working
man all his life, once said that
perhaps if I opened a store, even
a small store, I would no longer
have my life subject to the crazy
whim of this boss or that. Maybe
he was right. Finally, with your
good help, I opened three stores.
The total cost, if you are
interested, was twenty-one million
dollars, more or less and a
shrewd investment, I don't mind
saying. Culpepper Motors will add
five times that sum to its profits
over the next three months. And
our three stores, I do believe,
have accomplished a little
something that wiser men have
failed to do.

"That is all I have to say. Many
of you may regret that no
monuments will enshrine our work.
I wish we could change that, but
we can't. For myself, I feel that
when a man's wealth reaches a
certain point of large discomfort,
he does better to remain out of
the public's eye. So guard our
secretnot because you will be
believed if you reveal it, but
because you will be laughed at . .
."

As time passed, the question arose
as to the disposition of the one
thing of value left by the "space
merchants" as they came to be
calledthe solid gold letters.
Finally, those from the Fifth
Avenue shop were set in a glass
display case at the United
Nations. So visitors to the
national museum of France or
Japanor to the United Nations,
have always before them to remind
them, in letters of gold:

MARS PRODUCTS

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Document URL: http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/fast-martian-shop.html Last modified: Monday, 02-Aug-2004 09:28:45 EDT